


Smile Pretty and Watch Your Back

by Mosca



Category: The Boys (TV 2019)
Genre: Backstory, Female Friendship, Gen, Summer Camp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:34:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28053966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mosca/pseuds/Mosca
Summary: Queen Maeve tries to be friends with Starlight and gives away more than she planned.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 17
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Smile Pretty and Watch Your Back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [threadofgrace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/threadofgrace/gifts).



> Thanks for giving me the opportunity to write for you, threadofgrace! It was fun to get inside Maeve's head and build some backstory for her. Happy Yuletide!
> 
> This fic contains: discussion of canon character deaths and serious physical harm, mentions of suicide, non-graphic description of an anaphylactic allergic reaction, characters getting drunk, mentions of cannabis use, total disregard for comics canon, and celebratory Nazi punching. In other words, it's much tamer than the source material.
> 
> The title is from "Every State Line" by Ani DiFranco. My anonymous beta is, as always, the paragon of grace.

“Well, I punched a Nazi,” Maeve says. “I feel pretty good about that.” She is fixing the first of what she hopes will be many martinis. Starlight has repeatedly rejected Maeve’s offers of weed, but she’s cool with vodka.

“But not good enough to feel like one of the good guys?” Starlight kneels to take the first sip of her cocktail before she picks it up. Maeve has filled the glass so generously that the liquid curves slightly over its lip. Even with the preventative measure, Starlight spills a few drops on her shirt as she sits back down.

Maeve shrugs. Starlight already knows the answer; there’s no sense in replaying her greatest traumas. “Cheers,” Maeve says.

Maeve’s healing factor makes it difficult for her to get drunk and stay drunk. She hopes she can outpace it enough to numb her feelings for the rest of the night, but not so much that she tries to hook up with Starlight. She can’t afford to lose her only friend in the business.

“Sometimes I make a list of all the good things I’ve done,” Starlight says. “Just in my head. To help me fall asleep.”

“Lucky you, you have a list,” Maeve says. “I’m not like you. I don’t have that do-gooder instinct. I was just a kid when Vought hired me, and before that, being a supe was just an activity my parents put me into. All those gymnastics and Krav Maga classes were so I could do my routines at my appearances, not so I could get into actual fights.”

Starlight laughs darkly. She’s really digging into that martini, drinking faster than Maeve is. She’s younger than Maeve, so they weren’t in the same places at the same times, but they entered the same pageants and went to the same summer camps. “I hated gymnastics,” Starlight says. “My powers do _not_ include super coordination. Or super getting along with mean girls.”

“I loved doing it,” Maeve says. “But I wasn’t allowed to compete with the normal kids, so it got boring.”

“That was, like, the only place I was on a level playing field with the normal kids,” Starlight says. “I mean, in school, I was way behind because I missed so many days. Nobody cared if I caught up, because everyone knew I wouldn’t need it. It’s a miracle I know how to read.”

Silently, Maeve sips her martini. School was almost as easy for her as gymnastics and just as boring. When she got good grades, they became another source of attention, another way to alienate her from other kids. So she stopped raising her hand, turned in her homework only when she felt like it, figured out exactly how much effort she needed to put forth to ride the middle. It was the most useful skill she learned in school. But she doesn’t want to lord that over Starlight, so she skips to the part she thinks they have in common. “My parents pulled me out of regular school in fifth grade. I was in a homeschool network, but it was a joke. I spent an hour in the morning filling out those stupid worksheets and then it was off to another county fair.”

“I wish my mom had done that.” Starlight sighs. “She got me a scholarship to a private Christian school that wanted the prestige of a supe student and didn’t care about my grades.”

“That sounds better than fake homeschooling to me,” Maeve says.

Starlight laughs. “You would have gotten expelled after a month.”

“I was better at playing along back then,” Maeve says.

“You’re pretty good now,” Starlight says, vacuuming all the air out of the room. “I mean, people are getting kicked out of the Seven left and right, but here you are.”

“I’m good at watching my back now. That’s different.” Maeve swishes what’s left in her glass and knocks it back. When she swallows, she sees that Starlight is gripping an empty glass, waiting politely. “Refill?”

Maeve makes two fresh martinis, glad to have something to do with her hands. “Another of the same is okay?” She needs to talk because she doesn’t trust silence around Starlight yet. That was one of the best things about Elena: the times they could be quiet together and not fear the unsaid. Even if they get back together, they’ll never have those safe silences again. That’s how Maeve knows she won’t run back this time. “So,” she says, struggling against the headwind of nothing to say. “Tell me about a good thing you did. One of the things that puts you to sleep at night.”

Starlight bites her lip and hesitates. “I’ve already told all the good stories on TV,” she says. “Most of them were pretty boring. Breaking up fights, muggings, kittens out of trees. There’s not a lot of evil in the world, just people who are angry or desperate.” She accepts her second martini with an understated smile. “Or drunk.” She slurps the surface of her drink, making it ripple. She’s not going to give anything away. She doesn’t trust Maeve any more than Maeve trusts her.

Or she is trying to shake Maeve down for information. Maeve isn’t opposed to Starlight’s mission to dismantle Vought from the inside, but she doesn’t see what good it will do. Something else will arise in its place, and that new institution won’t be such a staunch defender of anodyne capitalism. At best, Maeve would be out of a job. At worst, she’d have to become an actual hero.

Maeve works better as a distraction. That’s always been her role: keep the heat off Homelander so he can soak up all the light and attention like he wants to. “Something good,” she says. “You want to hear about something good I’ve done.”

“If you want,” Starlight says.

“I saved Black Noir’s life once.”

“I know,” Starlight says with the certainty of someone who studied up on the Seven so she could ace her application. “The Bolivia mission.”

“No, that was PR,” Maeve says. “This was at supe camp when I was fifteen. Dustin and I used to smoke weed behind the arts and crafts shack after lights out, or he’d light matches and blow fireballs over the lake.”

“Dustin is Lamplighter?” Starlight interrupts. “Was. I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were friends.”

“We were when we were kids.” Homelander fucked that up, like a lot of other things.

“Oh, well, I – I’m still sorry. If I had known, I –“

“You would have, what? Saved him?” Maeve’s anger rises in her chest, and she shoves it back in with a generous gulp of her martini. “It wasn’t his first suicide attempt, just the first one they let him close the deal on.” That’s not what she’s angry about. She’s angry that their last conversation was a fight, and now that he’s gone, she’ll be stuck in that fight for the rest of her life, polishing the apology she’ll never get to make, imagining the hug of reconciliation he might accept now, after this much time. It’s not like she could have stopped him – the only thing he knew how to do was set himself on fire – but she might have been brave enough to try if she’d known he was close enough to reach.

Starlight nods and waits while Maeve drinks. “Sorry.” Every time Starlight apologizes, her face is a little more punchable. “I thought there was more.”

“Oh, right. The camp story. There’s more of that. Noir was a creepy kid. He didn’t talk to anyone, and he lurked around, which I guess hasn’t changed. He had a utility knife that he’d mess around with, scraping pieces of wood. One of the girls swore he’d drilled a hole in the wall of the showers, but if he did, nobody found it.” Maeve pauses, but Starlight doesn’t say anything, so she continues. “So we’re out one night, smoking a joint and eating cookies from a care package Dustin’s mom sent. Noir comes sneaking around and does this big ‘Aha’ when he finds us. We decide not to be the biggest assholes possible and offer him a cookie. We even share the joint with him. When he starts coughing, we think that’s all it is, but after a minute something’s clearly wrong. He’s fumbling around for something in his pockets, and it falls out, and then I’m on my hands and knees, in the dark, _high,_ looking for his EpiPen. Dustin runs off to get a counselor, and I’m there alone with the creepiest kid at camp. I find the EpiPen and stab him with it, and then I’m just sitting there holding his hand, praying I don’t have to do CPR. The camp calls an ambulance, and he’s back the next day, fine – as fine as he ever was. He comes up to me and gives me this deformed bird he carved out of a stick, and he whispers, ‘I owe you my life.’ From then on, he’s had my back. He never stopped being gross and unsettling, but I knew I could trust him.”

Starlight smiles like she has a secret. “Nut allergy. That’s how you knew.”

“Yep.” The ice-cold glass numbs Maeve’s hand. She leans into it; it’s how she wants to feel. “All this stuff about doing good for good’s sake, I just, I never felt it. I wanted to save the world when I was a kid, but whenever I try, I end up having to babysit Noir for twenty years. Does that – did you get what you needed out of me?”

“What I needed?” Starlight’s innocent flutter of eyelashes would fool most people, but Maeve is way past it.

“For when you report back to whoever. Your little anti-Vought vengeance gang.”

“I’m not –“ The gasp of scandal is definitely fake. “We’re just having a drink.”

Maeve tilts her head back and chugs the rest of the martini. It’s good enough vodka that it doesn’t even burn. “And now we’re done having a drink. You should leave.”

“Wait.” Starlight takes a tiny sip, like Maeve wouldn’t rip the glass out of her hands if she had to. “If you want me to go, I’ll go, but I really wasn’t going to tell anyone about you and Lamplighter and Noir. What good would it do? Part of me was hoping you’d have some kind of revelation, sure, but I didn’t expect it. Your stories are yours. I’m not going to take them away from you.”

It’s a pretty speech, but it feels sincere. Maybe Starlight is a world-class actress, or maybe she’s really trying. Maeve doesn’t have the energy to find out. “So you’ll keep it to yourself?”

“Yeah.” Starlight gets up and reaches for her jacket. “I’ll go. Thanks for the drink.”

“No,” Maeve says, her voice wavering with unplanned desperation. “Stay. Let’s see if we can get so drunk we can’t remember each other’s stories.”


End file.
